A network protocol is a tool or a set of procedures that enables devices to communicate back across the internet. In order to communicate together, two devices must support the same protocol or a gateway will need to be used to translate the communication.
Network Protocol vs. Internet Protocol
While there are many different types of network protocols, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the most widely used due to its ability to break down data into packets so they can be transferred
Under the traditional TCP/IP model of networking, TCP is used alongside the Internet Protocol (IP) to identify hosts to send data across the internet.
Within this model, IP identifies and defines the IP address of devices or applications that data will be forwarded to, and then TCP routes the data through a network to guide the content to its final destination.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
TCP is a protocol that converts data into packets so that it can be sent between a server and a client. Organizations use TCP to transfer content such as files, text, images and emails because it guarantees that the packets will be delivered accurately and in the correct order.
CP is a reliable protocol as it follows the flow and error control mechanism. It also supports the acknowledgment mechanism, which checks the state and sound arrival of the data. In the acknowledgment mechanism, the receiver sends either positive or negative acknowledgment to the sender so that the sender can get to know whether the data packet has been received or needs to resend.
User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a Transport Layer protocol. UDP is a part of the Internet Protocol suite, referred to as the UDP/IP suite. Unlike TCP, it is an unreliable and connectionless protocol. So, there is no need to establish a connection before data transfer. The UDP helps to establish low-latency and loss-tolerating connections establish over the network. The UDP enables process-to-process communication.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
FTP is a network protocol that’s used to transfer files from one device to another over an unencrypted TCP/IP connection. With FTP, a user can load up a web browser or FTP client such as FileZilla or FTP Voyager and send up to 2GB at once.
Many organizations use FTP because of its ability to send large files or lots of files at once in a way that’s fast and efficient. Unfortunately, this efficiency comes at the cost of security as FTP transmits all data in plain text.
For this reason, many organizations opt to use a secure version of FTP called File Transfer Protocol Secure Sockets Layer (FTPS), which functions the same but uses SSL encryption to obscure the transferred data.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
As you all know all the protocols play the important role in networking. HTTP is the most important protocol used for distribution and collaboration.
HTTP is a communication protocol that enables systems to communicate on the World Wide Web. With HTTP, a client will send a hypertext message request to a web server asking for access to the resources needed to load a web page
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
ICMP is for error reporting. When two devices connect over the Internet, the ICMP generates errors to share with the sending device in the event that any of the data did not get to its intended destination. For example, if a packet of data is too large for a router, the router will drop the packet and send an ICMP message back to the original source for the data.
